MANUAL OF THE NEW YOGA

Transcription

1 MANUAL OF THE NEW YOGA LESSON 1: THE NEW YOGA OF AWARENESS (VIMARSHA YOGA)

2 from awareness of experiencing to a new experience of awareness 2

3 Awareness is the Self. Awareness, Shiva, is the soul of the world. Thus, identifying individual awareness with universal awareness and attaining divine bliss, from where or from whom should one get scared? The Shiva Sutras Every appearance owes its existence to the light of awareness. Nothing can have its own being without the light of awareness. Kshemaraja Meditate on one s own body as the universe, and as having the nature of awareness. The yogi is always mindful of that witnessing awareness which alone is the subject of everything, which is always a subject and never an object. The Vijnanabhairava Tantra The body is an awareness. For seers, to be alive means to be aware. There is something in us all that can witness with our entire body. Carlos Castaneda Having made itself manifest, awareness abides as both the inner and the outer. The visible world is the body. Uptaladeva Shiva is the Self shining in all things, all-pervasive, all quiescent awareness. May the Shiva inpenetrated into my limited self through his power, offer worship to the Shiva of the expansive Self the concealer of himself by himself! The wishing tree of Self-Awareness, with its mighty branches, standing fullgrown in the region of the Heart, has the loveliness of Experience for its flowers, and the festive splendour of unimpaired Bliss for its fruits. Somananda 3

4 Listen! Our Lord [Shiva] whose nature is awareness, is unlimited, the absolute master of the arising and dissolving away of every power. The power which resides in the heart of awareness is freedom itself. The purpose of its creative activity is the group (kula), the entire range of experienced self, experienced object and process of experiencing. The Supreme Goddess is the absolute freedom of our own awareness which assumes these various forms. The Shastras and Agamas proclaim with reasoned argument that it [awareness] is free of thought-constructs [nirvikalpa] and precedes all mental representation of any objects. Abhinavagupta Awareness is devoid of objects; That is why it is called Eternally free from bonds. Mandukya Karika Awareness itself is going nowhere, is doing nothing outside of itself, there not being anything outside: it belongs to no one exclusively, has no restrictions, derivations or explanations awareness just is. Awareness is a singularity beyond personality and impersonality which cannot be contained, curtailed, expanded or transcended from without awareness. It is not important to simply label this awareness with a word like God, the Absolute or what have you, as to submit and abandon yourself to this singularity of awareness the awareness that runs through you as one person of a multipersonal universe of unlimited awareness Spiritual awareness cannot be locked up in churches, temples and mosques from which imposing directives issue forth, nor can it thrive diluted as part of the mainstream culture it is supposed to be educating Spiritual gatherings, spontaneous or organised Michael Kosok CONTENTS 4

5 AWARENESS AS ULTIMATE REALITY... 6 TIME TO BE AWARE... 7 THE NEW YOGA - TANTRA REBORN AWARENESS AND EXPERIENCE...14 THE MARK OF LORD SHIVA...17 AWARENESS AND ENERGY AWARENESS, SELF AND BODY...21 PRACTICING THE YOGA OF AWARENESS MACROMEDITATION MICROMEDITATIONS MICROMEDITATIONS MICROMEDITATIONS THE YANTRA OF SHAKTI THE GUIDING WORDS LESSON 1 - SUMMARY THE GRAND MANTRAM OF AWARENESS...31 LESSON 1 KARIKA LESSON 1 - GLOSSARY OF SANSKRIT TERMS

6 AWARENESS AS ULTIMATE REALITY Awareness is bliss. Awareness is the self. Awareness is freedom. Awareness is the divine. Awareness is all that there is. Awareness is the sole absolute. Awareness is light, space and time. Awareness is the substance of matter. Awareness is the inwardness of energy. Awareness surrounds and permeates all things. Awareness cannot be explained by any thing at all. Awareness is the condition for our experience of any thing. Awareness is ultimate reality, the source and essence of all realities. 6

7 TIME TO BE AWARE Humanity has reached a turning point in time, a turning point which requires us to establish a whole new relation to time, a whole new way of being in time, a whole new awareness of time. The nature of that turning point in time, of that new relation to time, that new way of being in time, and that new awareness of time is simple but profound. Quite simply: it is time to be aware. To be is to be aware. Time to be aware means: it is time for human beings to grant themselves the time to be to be aware. Without granting ourselves time to be aware we impoverish ourselves. For to be aware means to be aware of all there is to be aware of - all there is to sense and feel, experience and explore, enjoy and delight in, process and ponder, recollect and anticipate, delve into and draw insight from in the present moment. Without granting ourselves time to be aware of all that there is to be aware of in the moment, we become overburdened, fatigued, stressed out or dis-eased by all that we have been too rushed to give ourselves time to become aware of. We reduce awareness itself to the next thing to do or say, act on or react to. We reduce being to doing. In doing so, we reduce our lives to a series of actions strung out along a twodimensional timeline. We reduce the moment to a mere point in time, and time itself to a seemingly empty space between one moment point and another one which we have become addicted to filling with doing, whether in the form of speaking or acting, working or engaging in leisure activities. Even meditation becomes something to be done for example through the form of the type of bodily stretching engaged in under the name of yoga that substitutes for a meditative stretching of awareness. Doing dominates over being aware because all the business powers of this world conspire to keep us busy at all costs, not least by forcing us to sell our time to employers whose only interest is in exploiting it to the greatest extent possible and making it ever more productive. The old Protestant work ethic with its famous adage - the Devil makes work for idle hands - is so instilled in us that idleness itself has to be induced by falling sick or aided by the use of drugs, and any idle time we have has to be used to do something - if only to take drugs or indulge in activities which either require no awareness or in which we lose all awareness. In this way the Devil does indeed make work for idle hands, ensuring that even if they are not 7

8 working they are still doing, still not allowing themselves time to just be - to be aware. As a result we live as two-dimensional beings in two-dimensional time, racing along a line from one action, one contracted focus of awareness in time, to another. We have forgotten that time is not just a two-dimensional line along which the moments are strung like beads, but that each moment has a spacious, threedimensional insideness. There is not a physicist in the world who recognises the true nature of time and space that if what we experience as time is the space between the moments, then what we experience as space is time within the moment. Each moment is actually an enduring and expansive time-space of awareness in which we can abide or dwell the root meaning of to be. It is this time-space of awareness within the moment that we normally only experience as the physical space around us at some point in time. The true meaning of meditation is giving ourselves time to be aware, which means also giving ourselves space. Giving ourselves this time and space means inwardly expanding the time-space within the moment. This is a time-space that is infinitely expandable - but only inwardly, from within. We cannot meditatively expand our awareness if we do not first of all take time to linger, dwell and abide within the moment, exploring all there is to be aware of within it. If our experience of time is just one of skipping from one thing to another, one task to another, one thought to another, we are merely skating the surface of the moments and reducing them to points on a two-dimensional line. Those who live in two-dimensional time know only two dimensions of life doing and thinking, or action and speech. They may act on, react to or reflect on their lived experience past, present and future (their two-dimensional time). But they never truly grant themselves the time to simply be aware of all there is to experience within the moment. Were they only to take time to stop doing and be aware, they would become aware of just how much more there is to experience in the moment. Their lives, their lived experience, would be immeasurably enriched by that expanded awareness, rather than contracting or crowding out that very awareness. Not taking time to be aware however, we become closed to the rich dimensions of our immediate experiencing in the moment. Instead we identify with an impoverished and limited 8

9 range of experiencing becoming stuck in particular ways of experiencing ourselves, other people and the world. Or else we seek ever-new experiences through action rather than awareness - through doing rather than being. So extreme sports, high speed action and drug-induced highs substitute for the enriched experience that comes from slowing and deepening our awareness within the moment. Identification with limiting ways of experiencing ourselves, other people and the world is embedded in our very use of language. Thus instead of being aware of having a certain feeling such as anger or sadness, we say I am angry or I am sad. Instead of being aware of having a particular thought or feeling about some thing or person for example the thought that John is a bastard - we so identify with the feelings expressed in that thought that we take it as a fact that John is a bastard. As a result of this identification with a limited way of experiencing something or someone, our thoughts and feelings cease to be a true and authentic expression of all there is to be aware of in relation to that thing or person - and make it impossible for us to experience them in different ways. Identified with the text of our thoughts and feelings, we close our awareness to the whole experiential context in which they arise. Restricting awareness of the larger context of our experiencing not being aware of how much more there is to be experienced in and through any thing or person we also restrict the lived text of our own lives and relationships. If the contextual space of our awareness is not fully occupied by that text if we are not wholly preoccupied with it we feel empty and need to fill it with action or emotional drama (whether in ourselves or through television, film and vicarious soap operas). Herein lies the vicious circle in which individuals and relationships become bound up. For all those things which we have given ourselves no time-space to become aware of in the moment cumulatively mount up in time causing us stress, fatigue or dis-ease, bringing us to a point where we must put a damper on or repress them, or impelling us to impulsively act on them or act them out in an unaware and emotionally reactive and dramatic way. Not living meditatively - not granting ourselves time even to be fully aware of how we experience ourselves, we end up with a world in which neither real life people nor fictional characters have any time for one another. Instead their lives are reduced to a series of emotional dramas - interspersed by and compensating for periods of uneventful or impoverished experiencing. They have no time for 9

10 themselves or each other because they give themselves no time to be aware. Time itself is measured out purely in quantities, and so-called quality time is seen as something to be created only at certain times, rather than as our birthright as beings as a rich inner time-space of awareness that can be opened up at any time, within each and every moment of our lives. Being aware means not just attending to the awareness of our thoughts, but also to all the immediate bodily dimensions of our experiencing to our felt bodily sense of all that is present or going on within and around us. It also means attending to the spaces, inner and outer, within which we experience both ourselves and others, both thoughts and things. For those spaces we can become more aware of are not empty. By attending to the awareness of them we come to the experience of space itself, inner and outer, as something singular - as a singular field or time-space of awareness that is the spacious, inward expanse of the moment. Space and time themselves arise from time-space, which is more primordial than they themselves Modern man must first and above all find his way back into the full breadth of the space proper to his essence. That essential space of man s essential being receives the dimension that unites it to something beyond itself Unless man first establishes himself beforehand in the space proper to his essence and there takes up his dwelling, he will not be capable of anything essential within the destining now holding sway. Martin Heidegger Being aware also means dwelling or abiding in awareness in the same way that we abide and dwell in space. Whenever we stop sensing space, both within and around us, we contract the space of awareness in which we dwell. Whenever we lose our awareness in thought and action, rather than attending to the awareness of all that we experience in an immediate sensory way around and within us spaces and objects, colours and shapes, sensed feelings and impulses we also cease to hold open an expanded time-space of awareness. And whenever we allow our attention to just flit from one thought or action, one narrow focus of awareness to another, we lose sense of that larger field of awareness in which alone we can truly dwell or be and within which we can also come to truly know ourselves, each other and the world in a feeling way. 10

11 THE NEW YOGA - TANTRA REBORN Awareness is no thing and no being, but nor is it an empty nothing or state of non-being. It cannot be derived from, reduced to or explained by any thing such as the body or brain. That is because it is the ultimate and absolute field condition for our experience of any body or being, the condition for our experience of any thing or phenomenon, self or world, we are aware of including the experience of our own self and world, our own body and being. Conversely, every body and being, every thing or phenomenon, is an awareness a unique portion of that absolute and unbounded awareness that is the divine source of all beings and all bodies, all things and phenomena, all selves and all worlds. What I term The New Yoga is the yoga of awareness - understood as the very essence of the divine and of all that is. As such it is also tantra reborn giving new expression to the truths already recognised in medieval tantric metaphysics and experienced by its adepts: that the divine (Shiva) is awareness as such, not any being or divinity with awareness; that awareness is our very self, that Self which alone cannot be turned into an object but is pure subjectivity or awareness as such; and that we dwell within awareness as we dwell within space - within the timeless yet allembracing time-space of the moment. There is nothing that is not awareness, or that is outside awareness - no domain that is merely mundane or profane. For the divine is that singular but unbounded field or space of awareness embracing all qualitatively distinct experiences that emerge from and within it including all distinct states, conditions and qualities of awareness, and all phenomena we are or could possibly become aware of - in this or any other dimension of awareness, inner or outer, physical or non-physical. To be is to be aware. To be is also to abide or to dwell. Meditation in The New Yoga means constantly taking time to be aware and therefore to abide or dwell in awareness in the expanded time-space of the moment. The New Yoga, as the way of awareness leads from a new awareness of all that we can experience in the moment to a new experience of awareness in its divine spiritual depth and 11

12 expansiveness. In particular being aware leads to the experience of being-inawareness whether alone or with others. Being aware also allows us to identify with the divine awareness in which we dwell rather than with any particular experience of ourselves, other people or the world that we have within that awareness. The path of The New Yoga is thus a path that leads from Being Aware to Being-in-Awareness and to Being Awareness. From a tantric perspective, Being Awareness does not mean entering a suprasensuous state of Buddhistic nirvana in which we cease to be aware of anything, even ourselves. On the contrary, it intensifies and enriches our sensuous experience of all there is to be aware of in particular all those countless sensual shapes and qualities of awareness that find expression in our immediate sensory experience of the world. For there is nothing we can be aware of no body or thing, no being or self, that is not itself an awareness. That includes our own body and self and that of others. To experience our own body and self as an awareness means experiencing our every bodily movement and psychological mood as mudra as the expression of a movement, mood or mode of awareness. To experience our bodies as an awareness transforms our body as a whole and our every sensation into a sense organ of our soul a way of sensing and coming to know ourselves, other people and the world. Through Being Aware, Being-in-Awareness and Being Awareness, we come to Be the Awareness that both our Self and Body essentially are. We come, in other words, to an experience of our divine Awareness Self and Awareness Body that uniquely individualised portion of the divine awareness that knows itself in and through us, that takes shape or bodies itself as each of us, and that is also aware of itself as each of us - and aware too of all that each of us is aware of. Being Aware, Being-in-Awareness and Being Awareness also allows us to bear with divine grace all that we experience or are aware of, feeling it safely held and embraced in the divine space of the awareness that we are. It also allows us to body the awareness that we are in relating to other beings aware that every other being too, is an awareness, a unique embodiment of the divine awareness embraced by the same divine space of awareness. For awareness is not yours or mine, the private property of a body or brain, self or subject, ego or I, person or divinity. It is our common and divine source as beings, that which we each embody and personify in 12

13 our own unique ways. It is the womb in which we eternally dwell, a womb we do not leave at birth and from which we are constantly reborn - now and in the hereafter. Above all, it is through Being Aware, Being-in-Awareness and Being Awareness that we can learn to be with each other in awareness, and to be aware of each other as the unique awareness that we each are. In particular, through the unique methods of The New Yoga we can come to a tangible, sensory experience of another human being as a unique human face and embodiment of the divine. More than that, we can come to behold the divine face and divine body of another human being the face of their divine Awareness Self and the glory of their divine Awareness Body. That is why The New Yoga marks a radical departure from both traditional, modern and New Age yoga practices, whose focus lies on the physical body alone. The aim of The New Yoga, as tantra, is not to learn how to stretch and contort our physical bodies, but rather how to stretch or extend (tan) our awareness to hold open a space of awareness in which we make room for everything of which we are aware, and in which we can both receive and be received by other beings as the unique awareness that we each are. The tantric practices of the New Yoga lead to a profoundly sensuous experience of spiritual intimacy and intercourse with others for through the innate powers of the Awareness Self we can learn to merge and meld our Awareness Body with that of others, thus experiencing the unique qualities of their awareness or soul in our body, and of our soul in theirs. In this way it offers a new understanding and experience of love not as a feeling, but as a capacity (Shakti) for bodily identification with the soul of another and its qualities of awareness. The New Yoga is tantra reborn because it is both education in the fundamental and divine reality of awareness, as recognised in tantric tradition, and initiation in the divine spatiality, substantiality, sensuality and sexuality of awareness the aim of tantric meditational practices. In the true tradition of tantra as opposed to other forms of mysticism, Christian, Buddhist and Vedic, it denies the illusory character of the sensory world and sensory experiencing and the suprasensous nature of the spiritual. Instead it both affirms all things sensory and allows them to be experienced as the expression of the innate sensual qualities or flavours of awareness (rasa) and the divine elixir that is the bliss of awareness (chitananda). 13

14 AWARENESS AND EXPERIENCE We tend to think of our own consciousness only as awareness of something specific. A phenomenon is any such thing we are aware of - whether this thing be a thing or thought, object or person, emotion or sensation, intuition or impulse. It is this awareness of phenomena that constitutes what we call experience. Therefore we tend to think of ourselves as conscious beings only because we experience phenomena because we are aware of them. But if our consciousness consists only of what we experience or are aware of, what or who are we? What or who is the self or I that is doing the experiencing the experiencing self. In reality, most people are far from knowing that self. What they are aware of instead is their own experienced self the self they experience themselves to be at any given time. This is because the experienced self is also an experiencing self for it is through its eyes that we experience the world and other people. Yet, it cannot be the experiencing self, for though an experienced self can also be an experiencing self, it does not work the other way round. The true essence of our experiencing self is that it cannot also be an experienced self - something we consciously experience like anything else. For it is only through the experiencing self that we can experience anything like a self at all. But what then is the true nature of the experiencing self if it is not our experienced self? The answer provided by the teachings of tantra is that the experiencing self is awareness as such. It is therefore only through our awareness of experiencing including the way we experience ourselves that we experience our true self, the experiencing self that is awareness. The awareness of experiencing leads to a new experience of awareness itself as our true self. The way in which awareness of experience provides a reflection of our experiencing self or awareness-self was termed vimarsha in the teachings of tantra. The yoga of awareness is therefore vimarsha yoga. Each of us experiences ourselves in a unique way. Some people experience themselves in more or less the same way all the time. Others experience themselves in quite different ways having a different experience of themselves at different times, in different places and situations, and with different people. Everything we experience in ourselves and in our world can affect our self-experience our sense of who we 14

15 are. Conversely, the way we experience ourselves shapes the way we experience the world and other people. But not everyone has the capacity to allow what they experience what or how they feel for example to alter their self-experience, their basic sense of who they are. What happens to them, whatever they experience, they remain identified with a particular experience of themselves. Both our self-experience and our experience of the world and other people may be positive or negative. Most forms of self-help and psychotherapy aim to remove negative elements of a person s experience, for example the experience of suffering or lack of self-worth, and replace them with positive ones such as pleasure and selfesteem. The yoga of awareness offers a different understanding of negative experiencing and a different approach to it. It does not seek to overcome suffering by replacing negative with positive experiences. Instead it understands all suffering as something that arises from being identified with any element of our experience positive or negative. In particular it arises from being identified with specific ways of experiencing ourselves for it is our self-experience that shapes both our experience of the world and other people and our relationship to them. One way people seek to escape from or overcome negative experiencing of themselves, other people or the world is to think about that negative experience or explore their feelings about it. But thinking and feeling alone does not break our identification with a particular way of experiencing ourselves. For the thoughts and feelings we have about our experienced reality are in fact part of that reality they too are something we experience. Modern cognitive psychologists recognise that thoughts we have about our experience also shape our experience. They see the vicious circle whereby the negative thoughts arising from what we experience not only reflect but also actively reinforce negative aspects of our experience and intensify negative feelings connected with it. Their way out of this circle is to get people to distinguish negative thoughts they may have about their experienced reality from that reality thus making room for different mental interpretations and emotional responses to their experience. Many people find such cognitive therapy difficult, because it seems to deny or dismiss the sheer intensity of their own negative feelings and experiences, one which necessarily finds expression in negative thoughts even if those thoughts are not helpful. But hidden behind the relatively simplistic 15

16 principles and methods of modern cognitive psychology however is a far deeper and more sophisticated yogic understanding of life that goes back centuries indeed millennia. This is the understanding that to think, feel or experience something anything - is one thing. But to be aware of having a particular thought, feeling or experience is another. Together with this went the understanding that thoughts and feelings we have about our experience form part of our self-experience. If we identify with these thoughts and feelings therefore, we reinforce our identification with our experience. Practicing the yoga of awareness means sustaining our awareness of all that we are experiencing, including our experienced self. Awareness of experiencing is what allows us to actively identify with, deepen and intensify our experience rather than being identified with it. To be unconscious of something is the very same thing as to be identified with it. The Self that can consciously identify with an element of its experience is not the self that is ( unconsciously ) identified with it. It is a Self that must by definition be distinct from all its own identifications and from every aspect of its own experience. That Self is awareness. Vimarsha - awareness of experiencing - turns experience and the experienced self into a mirror or reflection of awareness and of the experiencing Self. The reflection of awareness in our bodily experiencing however, is not the same thing as mental reflection on experience thinking about it. Western psychology still operates within the confines of a philosophy that defines knowledge as a result of mental intellectual reflection on our immediate bodily and sensory experiencing. It knows only two things experience and reflection, body and mind. It does not understand that all mental reflections on our bodily experience form part of our bodily experience. True knowledge only comes through awareness of both our immediate experiencing and the mental thoughts or reflections we have about it. It is not from experience but only from awareness of experiencing that truly deep thinking and knowledge arise not as reflection on experience but as a reflection of that boundless field of awareness (SHIVA) in which all experienced phenomena and all experiential worlds (SHAKTIS) arise. 16

17 THE MARK OF LORD SHIVA Thought Awareness Experience Freedom from suffering cannot come about through exploring our own thoughts and emotions - or any elements of our experience, negative or positive. It can only come about through awareness of all that we are experiencing at any given time. The diagram above explains one of the basic esoteric symbols or yantras of The New Yoga, understood as a yoga of awareness. This logo is also the traditional sign or mark of the tantric concept of divinity personified by Lord Shiva (Maheshvara). Here the three golden bars represent the domains of Thought, Awareness and Experience respectively. The upward- and downward-pointing arrows beside the large circle represent the vicious circle whereby the thoughts we have not only serve to reflect the way we experience ourselves, the world and other people, but actively reinforce that experience. The figure eight or lemniscate in the circle represents something quite different. This is the way in which we can become aware of both our experience and our thoughts about it, rather than getting stuck in identification either with our thoughts or with the experiences they reflect. The downward- and upward- pointing arrows in the lower part of the lemniscate indicate the way in which our awareness of what we are experiencing can, by itself, alter the whole character of our experience, freeing us 17

18 from identification with it. The upward-pointing arrow in the upper part of the lemniscate represents our awareness of the thoughts that accompany our experience. It also represents the way in which our awareness, having altered the character of our experience, can in turn generate new thoughts about it. The downward-pointing arrow indicates the way in which our own thoughts, experienced in the form of mental words and word patterns, work our awareness into particular patterns of experience, thus shaping our experience. The central gold line and the arrows leading from its centre represent sustained awareness of both our experience and our thoughts about it. The space within the circle represents our entire field of awareness a field which embraces all elements of our inner and outer experience, including our thoughts. The red dot or bindu at the centre of the circle represents the spiritual heart of this field of awareness (hrydaya). This is the you that is not identified with any element of your experience. The you that is simply awareness. The foundation of tantric philosophy is the recognition that awareness is the ultimate reality, and not any phenomena - whether things or thoughts, sensations or perceptions, feelings or emotions - that we may be aware of. In the metaphysics of The New Yoga, awareness is understood as having its own innate substantiality and spatiality, its own innate sensual qualities and characteristics, its own innate patterns and bodily shapes. Awareness (akula) forms itself into those individualised units of consciousness (kula) that we call beings. It is only from the outside that these bounded units of consciousness appear as physical bodies whether human bodies or the seemingly insentient bodies that we perceive as physical objects. Awareness, as the ultimate reality, also forms itself into those mental patterns or thought forms, which shape our experience of the world and of every body in it. Our thoughts take the form of mental words spoken inwardly or aloud. But our awareness of thought is not itself a thought it is something essentially wordless and thoughtfree. Thoughts themselves take shape in our awareness as mental words and verbal concepts (vikalpa). But they do so from within a field of awareness that is essentially wordless and thought-free (nirvikalpa). Having arisen as mental words however, thoughts work our awareness into patterns of worldly experiencing. All that we experience in this world therefore, is already a patterned interpretation of underlying qualities of awareness or soul. In a word therefore - wording is worlding. The wording 18

19 or verbal patterning of our thoughts is what shapes or works our awareness into patterns of experiencing and action. Therefore it is only through awareness of our thoughts as mental words and word patterns that we can prevent these words and word patterns from working our awareness into unhelpful or limiting patterns of experience and action. Simply to think a thought to ourselves in the form of the word pattern I am angry is to work our awareness into a particular pattern of experience and action. For one thing the wording I am angry says I currently identify with being angry. Then again, the very word angry is an emotional interpretation of a particular mood or quality of awareness. Just as calling something red ignores the unique tone of its redness, so does calling oneself or another person angry ignore the unique tonality of awareness that we or they are experiencing. Every emotion we experience is an experiential interpretation of a quality of awareness one shaped or reinforced by the very words we use to name it. Anger is not just the name of some pre-existing thing in the form of an emotion. It is an emotional patterning of experience that goes together with the impulse to engage in a particular pattern of action ( getting angry ). In saying to ourselves or others that I am angry we do not merely name an emotion - we identify with or reinforce a particular emotional pattern of both experience and action. We anger, just as we sadden or happy. Emotional nouns and adjectives are also verbs. Another word for a mental wording and patterning of our awareness is mantra. Mind is mantra, but not necessarily in the root sense of this word, which means a word which guards or protects, saves or liberates (tra) our awareness from over-activity of mind (mana). To know our mind as mantra in this sense means guarding our awareness of mental wordings and their power to pattern both our experience and behaviour. Thus instead of thinking I am angry - thereby identifying with this anger and acting it out - we remain wordlessly aware of having the thought that I am angry. Reflecting on feelings in thought and/or reactively expressing feelings in words are the most common ways in which people avoid having to fully experience feelings with awareness. Our awareness of a thought is not a thought, but is something thought-free. Similarly, our awareness of an emotion is not charged with emotion but is emotion-free. Awareness is thus the very essence of freedom - moksha. 19

20 AWARENESS AND ENERGY Modern science recognises only a universe of matter, light and other forms of energy. Whilst referring to all sorts of subtle energies, New Age spiritual philosophies parody the modern scientific world outlook by accepting the dogma that ultimately everything is energy. In contrast, tantric metaphysics affirms the fundamental reality of awareness. The spiritual metaphysics of Kashmir Shaivism in particular was a unique and profound expression of the true scientific relation between awareness (SHIVA) and energy (SHAKTI), these being understood as distinct but inseparable aspects of a singular dynamic relation. In The New Yoga this profound metaphysical relation is articulated in the form of a dual scientific principle. 1. Awareness is the inwardness of energy. 2. Matter is the outwardness of energy. Most people have had the experience of an insight or heightened state of awareness making them feel more vital or energised - or alternatively feeling their energy drained by an excess of sensory or emotional experiencing. Even the sensory overkill of the sights and sounds experienced in a supermarket is energy draining - so completely absorbing our awareness that energy ceases to be released from that awareness. This reflects a second dual scientific principle of The New Yoga: 1. Awareness releases energy. 2. Experiencing absorbs awareness. To maintain our energy we need to sustain a state of aware experiencing. Only in this way can we prevent our awareness being so absorbed in our experience that it ceases to release new energy from a state of potentiality. Similarly, to recover our energy requires that we re-establish a state of aware experiencing. This means either expanding our awareness to fully embrace all that we are or have been experiencing (the function of meditation and dreaming), or restricting our experiencing so that it can be fully embraced in our awareness (the function of meditation, rest and sleep). True awakeness however, is a state of awareness that can not only embrace all that we are experiencing but constantly and creatively release fresh energy and experiences. 20

21 AWARENESS, SELF AND BODY Every possible experience we can have of ourselves and of reality as such is limited and partial and therefore potentially limiting. Every dimension of our experience implies the possibility of other dimensions. Every experiential world implies the existence of other such worlds. Every experienced self implies the existence of other selves we could experience. Any experienced self is always a partial self a self that constitutes just one part of our whole self or soul. The whole self or soul is not any experienced self it is a field of awareness that embraces countless possible ways of experiencing ourselves, countless possible ways of experiencing others and countless possible experiential worlds. Only when we cease to be identified with any particular and partial experience of ourselves do we realise our true self, our whole self or soul. Such self-realisation can only come about through bodily awareness. For along with every partial experience of ourselves and of reality goes a partial experience of our own bodies. Thus the more we think the more our awareness tends to become concentrated in just one part of our body our heads. The more anxious or emotional we are the more our awareness concentrates itself in our chest region, affecting our breathing. The key to maintaining awareness of our self as a whole is 1. to attend to our bodily awareness of whatever we are experiencing to where and how we experience it in our bodies. 2. to sustain awareness of our body as a whole whatever we are experiencing and wherever we are experiencing it in our body. Only through sustaining awareness of our body as a whole can we sustain awareness of our self as a whole our whole self or soul. Whole-body awareness is what allows us to achieve true self-realisation rather than losing ourselves in whatever we might be experiencing at any given time - becoming identified with our experienced self and our experienced world. For awareness alone is our whole self or soul, distinct from every partial self we might experience. Whole-body awareness is also the key to maintaining awareness as such to distinguishing whatever we might be experiencing from our awareness of experiencing it. The New Yoga is tantra reborn. One meaning of tantra is that it is a form of yoga based on direct bodily knowing and 21

22 awareness (dehavidya). For every way of experiencing our self goes together with a particular way of experiencing our body. Through whole-body awareness we come to experience our body itself in an entirely new way. Through sustained awareness of our experienced body and self as a whole we arrive at a fundamentally different experience of both body and self. We experience both body and self as an unbounded field of awareness and not as any particular body or self experienced in that field. The body we begin to experience is a body of awareness unbounded by the flesh it is an awareness body. The self we begin to experience is not any part of ourselves we might be aware of. It is awareness as such. This experience of self as awareness was personified in the tantric tradition by Lord Shiva. In this tradition, Shiva is our own divine self or I and that of all other beings - a self that does not have consciousness or awareness but is awareness. This divine self does not have a body but embraces all bodies in its awareness field. Just as our own awareness embraces not only our own bodies but the bodies of other people around us so does the divine awareness field that is Shiva embrace every body in the entire universe. It was in this sense that the entire universe was understood as the divine body (divyadeha) of Shiva. PRACTICING THE YOGA OF AWARENESS Stepping back from our lived experience into awareness of experiencing is by no means the same as intellectually distancing ourselves from or repressing our experience. On the contrary, this step back is the stepping stone that leads us to a new and deeper experience of the self and body as an awareness field free of all limiting experiences of ourselves and our bodies. Practicing the yoga of awareness however, requires that we go through the following ten steps of mentally rewording our mental, emotional or somatic experience in such a way as to achieve the step back from experiencing to awareness. 22

23 MACROMEDITATION 10 Steps from Experiencing to Awareness 1. I am my experience of THIS ( this sensation or emotion, thing or thought, place or person, event or situation etc.) 2. I AM AWARE OF experiencing This. 3. I AM NOT MY EXPERIENCE of This. 4. I am THE AWARENESS of experiencing This. 5. In experiencing This, I am also aware of experiencing MYSELF in a particular way. 6. In experiencing This, I am also aware of experiencing MY BODY in a particular way. 7. I am not this EXPERIENCE of my Body and Self. 8. I am THE AWARENESS of experiencing my body and self in this way. 9. I am not THIS EXPERIENCE. 10. I am THIS AWARENESS. 23

24 MICROMEDITATIONS 1 Be aware of how you inwardly feel and experience different regions and parts of your body head and eyes, neck and chest, belly and bottom, legs and feet. Be aware of the way you feel and experience your body as a whole. Be the awareness of your body as a whole and how you experience it. Be aware of something outside you in space. Be aware of your body as a whole as something in space. Be the awareness of the space between and around your body and the object. Be aware of something outside you in space. Be aware of your body as a whole as something in space. Be the awareness of both your body and the thing outside, and sense them both as embraced by a common space of awareness. Be aware of a person, and attend to the look on their face and in their eyes. Be aware of your own body, feeling your own face and eyes. Being aware of both the other person's eyes and your own, intend your awareness of the look in their eyes to communicate through your eyes. Be aware of any thing in your experience, inner or outer whether an object. or person, thought or thing, feeling or emotion, sensation or impulse. Be aware of your immediate bodily and sensuous experience of that thing. Be the awareness of your immediate bodily experiencing of that thing. Be aware of all you are experiencing right now, inwardly and outwardly. Be aware of your overall experience of yourself right now. Be the awareness of all your experience, including your experience of self. Be aware of a thought or stream of thoughts in the inner space of your head. Be aware of all the sensed spaces within and around your body as a whole. Be the awareness that is those spaces, and sense them as a singular space of awareness. Be aware of a particular feeling or emotion that you are experiencing in a part of your body. Be aware of the space of awareness in which you experience that feeling or emotion. Be the awareness of that space and sense it as a space of awareness. Be aware of any localised sensation, pleasurable or painful in a part of your body. Be aware of your body as a whole, and its sensed inner spaces. Be the awareness that is the space within which you experience that sensation, pain or pleasure. 24

25 MICROMEDITATIONS 2 Take time to: Be aware of your eyes. Be aware of your nose, mouth and jaw. Be aware of your face as a whole. Be aware of your face and eyes. Be aware of the top, back and sides of your head. Be aware of your head as a whole. Be aware of your head as a whole. Be aware of breathing through your nose. Be aware of the inner space of your head. Be aware of the surface of your chest. Be aware of your chest expanding and contracting as you breathe. Be aware of the inner space of your chest. Be aware of your head, chest and upper body as a whole. Be aware of your feet, legs and whole lower body below the waist. Be aware of your abdomen and breathe with it. Be aware of the surface of your lower abdomen. Be aware of your abdomen expanding and contracting like a balloon as you breathe. Be aware of the inner space of your abdomen. Be aware of any part of your body. Be aware of another part of your body at the same time. Be aware of your body as a whole. Be aware of a single sensory quality of an object such as its shape, colour or texture. Be aware of another sensory quality of that same object. Be aware of the object as a whole. Be aware of an object you can see. Be aware of another object you can see without shifting your gaze. Be aware of the common space in which both objects stand. Be aware of an object you see. Be aware of the eyes through which you see the object. Be aware at the same time of the object you see and the eyes through which you see it. Be aware of the space around your body. Be aware of the sensed inner space of your body. Be aware of both outer and inner spaces. 25

26 Be aware of an object you see. Be aware of the object and of the eyes through which you see it. Be aware of the object seen, the seeing of it, and the eyes through which you see it. Be aware of the surface of a wall. Be aware of your chest surface. Be aware of both at the same time. Be aware of the surface of a wall. Be aware of the surface of your chest. Be aware of the space between those surfaces. Be aware of an object. Be aware of the space around that object. Be aware of the space around your body. Be aware of an object. Be aware of your body. Be aware of the space between your body and the object. Be aware of the space surrounding an object. Be aware of the space surrounding your body. Be aware of the space around your body and the object as one space. Be aware of something you sense in the space around your body such as an object. Be aware of something you sense in the inner space of your body such as a feeling. Be aware of the outer and inner spaces as one space. Be aware of everything there is to be aware of around you, without focussing on any one thing. Be aware of everything there is to be aware of within you, without focussing on any one thing. Be aware of every thought or feeling you have about the things you are aware of, without focussing on those thoughts or feelings. Be aware of anything more there is to be aware of outside you. Be aware of anything more there is to be aware inside you. Be aware of any further thoughts you have about the things you are aware of, without focussing on the things you are thinking about. Be aware of the felt boundary between your insideness and outsideness, the sensed spaces within and around you. Be aware of how open or closed, porous or impermeable that boundary feels. Be aware of whether your overall sense of self comes more from the spaces within or around your body. Be aware of any thought you have about some thing you sense within or around you. Be aware of the thought as a thought, without focussing on the thing you are thinking about. Be aware of the thing and of the thought as two quite distinct and separate things. 26

27 MICROMEDITATIONS 3 Be aware of any object or sensory quality. Be aware of any part of your body. Be the awareness of both. Be aware of an object as a whole. Be aware of your body as a whole. Be the awareness of your body and the object. Be aware of an object you see. Be aware of the eyes through which you see it. Be the awareness of seeing the object through your eyes. Be aware of the space around an object. Be aware of the space around your body. Be the awareness of the common space around your body and the object. Be aware of the space around both your body and an object. Be the awareness of that space. Be the awareness that is that space, sensing it as a space of awareness. Be aware of the space around you. Be aware of anything you sense in that space. Be the awareness that is that space, sensing it as a space of awareness. Be aware of the sensed inner space of your body of head, chest or abdomen. Be aware of anything you sense in that space whether thought, feeling or impulse. Be the awareness that is that space, sensing it as a space of awareness. Be aware of the sensed spaces around and inside your body. Be aware of those spaces as part of one singular space. Be the awareness that is that singular space. Be aware of anything you sense in the space around you. Be aware of anything you sense in the space within you. Be the awareness that is the space in which you sense things within and around you Be aware of any thoughts that arise about something within or around you. Be the awareness of those thoughts, without focussing on the thing you are thinking about. Be the awareness of the thing, without focussing on the thoughts that arise about it. Be aware of the space in which you sense some thing within or around you. Be aware of the space in which thoughts arise about that thing. Be the awareness that is that space the awareness within which you sense things and within which thoughts arise about them. 27